Miramax Films has picked up North American rights to Becoming Jane, in which Anne Hathaway stars as British novelist Jane Austen, reports Variety. The film is directed by Julian Jarrold, who directed Miramax's U.K. import Kinky Boots. James McAvoy, Maggie Smith and Julie Walters also star.

The film centers on a love affair Austen began as a 20-year-old -- with brilliant, roguish Irishman Tom Lefroy -- that inspired her career as one of the world's great romantic writers. The movie also looks at how the writer's relationship with Lefroy helped create the male characters in "Pride & Prejudice."

As they said over on AustenBlog, "There are so many things wrong with that sentence that we are quite in despair."

I'd be more appalled by the casting of Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen if I hadn't seen her in Brokeback Mountain and been shocked to discover that she's actually quite good. And hey, if Keira Knightly can pull off (a rather modified, but lovely, version of) Elizabeth Bennett, maybe the chick from The Princess Diaries will make a perfectly good Jane Austen.

Otherwise, the casting seems pretty good. Certainly Maggie Smith is always a plus. And after trying desperately to quell my disturbing attraction to McAvoy's goat-man in Narnia it'll be nice to enjoy him in a role where he's got human legs.

Check out "Rory O'Shea Was Here," a sweet little tear-jerker of an Irish movie about two young disabled men who fight to get the government to let them live on their own, and then you can be attracted to James McAvoy both with goat legs and with non-functional legs. In for a penny, in for a pound.